Monday, February 22, 2016

Visit to a Cold War Site, norfolk

A group from CCC visited the previous atomic bomb store near Elveden yesterday on a suitably grey day. It was a great tour and many thanks to the owner Keith Eldred and his wife for their hospitality.

Here I have produced a few shots in monochrome which seems to suit the sombre subject well. The first is the last shot of the day - a 30 second exposure of one of the four restored watch towers.

From their website 'Construction of the Bomb Store on Thetford Heath, known as RAF Barnham began in 1953 or 1954 and was completed by 1955. it was built specifically to store and maintain atomic weapons, and this is reflected in its layout. the principal storage buildings are divided into two main groups, larger stores designed to hold the bomb casings and high explosive components and smaller stores to hold fissile cores. By the early 1960s this specialized facility was obsolete, as free fall nuclear bombs were superseded (as the principal British nuclear deterrent) by the stand off missile Blue Steel, and the storage andmaintenance of nuclear weapons was moved to the V bomber airfields. The last nuclear weapons were probably removed from the site by April 1963.The Site was sold to its present owner in 1965,and since that date it has been used as a lightIndustrial estate. the plan form of the Bomb Store remains virtually unmodified the majority of the buildings survive intact, the boundary fences and watch towers also remain.RAF Barnham was one of two such sites built in England, the other is at Faldingworth inLincolnshire which has the same types ofbuilding and is almost identical in plan form